Chapter 191: Chapter 191: Terrible

Max had become an overworked zombie exactly the way he had predicted he would the second Damian put him under direct command.

Back during the rebellion, being a Shadow had meant hard work too, but it had been a different kind of hard. Missions, blood, running on too little sleep, making impossible decisions in the span of a breath You either came back alive or you didn’t. It was simple.

This was worse.

This was schedules and noble houses and official seals and ten people arguing over ceremony routes, like the empire would collapse if a duke stood three feet too far to the left.

Max would have preferred getting stabbed.

It had started with George keeping his word.

Max had been formally adopted into House Claymore and named heir, all of it done properly, signed, sealed, and witnessed. Damian himself had signed the recognition. Just like that, Max went from being a man George had used when it was convenient to being the future head of Claymore.

It should have felt like victory.

Instead, it mostly felt like George had handed him a jeweled knife and expected gratitude because the blade was polished.

Still, Max understood what it meant. George was making his choice. Elliot had been pushed aside without ever being told directly that the ground under his feet was already gone. Max had seen enough of noble families to know how this worked. Nobody announced the burial while the man was still standing. They just started treating him like a ghost and waited for him to notice.

Elliot, unfortunately, was too arrogant to notice anything until it hit him in the face.

That part came soon enough.

The first official call between Damian and Gabriel happened during an imperial hearing, formal enough that everyone who mattered was watching. The entire imperial board was present. So was the Claymore side. Reports were being reviewed, failures laid out, ministries questioned. It should have been routine by court standards.

Instead, Gabriel dismantled the Ministry of Magic in front of everyone.

Max still remembered the exact feeling in the room. That sharp, charged stillness when people realized too late that the pretty omega they had half-dismissed as overworked decoration was not there to politely explain numbers. Gabriel had come armed with facts, names, failures, dates, missing actions, and ignored responsibilities.

It had been vicious.

Max had liked him immediately.

And Damian…

Max would put money on the fact that Damian took one look at Gabriel during that hearing and never fully looked away again.

Max knew Damian well enough to know that the man had fallen in love with the omega.

Gabriel became a priority in that moment. Max was sure of it.

And somewhere inside all of that, Elliot finally got his first real warning that the world around him had shifted without his permission.

Damian was not a man who forgot faces. He was certainly not a man who forgot disrespect, incompetence, or people who mistook his silence for lack of notice. If Elliot had any sense, he would have understood that the hearing was not only Gabriel’s stage. It was also the moment Damian quietly took inventory.

Max doubted Elliot understood the full danger of that.

George had seen Gabriel place himself too visibly in front of the Empire. He had seen Damian notice him. He had seen the board starting to tilt in ways he did not control.

And George, when he felt control slipping, became cruel.

At first he tried to use Max the way he always had—through implication and orders that were shaped like suggestions so he could pretend later he had meant nothing improper.

Keep Gabriel in line.

Remind him of his place.

Don’t let him become difficult.

Make sure he cooperates.

At some point George stopped pretending.

He wanted Gabriel forced. Physically, mentally, and sexually – whatever worked, what weakened him or reminded Gabriel that George was still something to be handled rather than respected.

Max had hated George before.

That was the point where hatred became something colder.

He refused every time.

He gave George just enough obedience to avoid an open split, but every real order that would have cornered Gabriel, humiliated him, or pushed him into that kind of violation died in Max’s hands.

Gabriel, meanwhile, was already running on too much strain and too little support. Too much work, too many expectations, and too many people relying on his authority because it was easier than admitting he should have been assisted long before that.

The collapse, when it came, was ugly.

Gabriel had been overworked to the point of shaking, and on top of that, his heat had hit. George still expected him to be functional. Still expected him to be presentable.

Anabelle intervened before Max could.

She was one of George’s secretaries, capable and a no-bullshit woman. She saw the situation for what it was and stepped in. She got Gabriel out. She shut the whole thing down. And when it became clear Gabriel needed medical help, she made sure he was hospitalized.

That was the moment Max stopped seeing her as just one of George’s staff.

People remembered grand gestures because they were dramatic. Max remembered the ones who acted when it mattered.

Anabelle had acted.

George was still dangerous, scheming and convinced he could outplay everyone in the room if he stayed smiling long enough. Elliot was still an idiot. The ministry was still incompetent. Damian was still terrifying. The Empire was still dragging itself into a new shape with the grace of a wounded animal pretending not to limp.

But Max and Gabriel, after all of that, finally spoke properly. In awful condition, but they did.

So Max and Gabriel came to an arrangement.

They would pretend.

Max would act enough like George’s loyal heir to avoid forcing George’s hand too early. Gabriel would act enough like he was still inside George’s reach that George would keep underestimating him. Together, they would let George believe he still had a hold over the board while quietly denying him the pieces he wanted most.

It was not trust yet.

But it was the beginning of something functional, and, in Max’s experience, that mattered more.

Unfortunately, the Empire had chosen this exact stretch of time to launch the first official coming-of-age ceremony under Damian’s reign, which meant Max had no space to process any of it because he was too busy drowning.

Every noble family wanted something.

Better seating. Better introductions. Better visibility. Better route access. Better symbolic placement in the ceremony. One woman filed an actual complaint over decorative ribbon. A duke wrote three pages about historical precedence in processional order as if Max had personally insulted his dead ancestors. Somebody else cared about candle height. Max had stared at that one long enough to briefly consider treason.

Damian, naturally, only looked at the chaos and said, “Handle it.”

So Max handled it.

The problem was that in the middle of all that mess, he had barely seen Adam in the last two months.

That was the thing that got under his skin.

He had caught glimpses only. A corridor. A dinner. A late hour where one of them had been arriving while the other was already being dragged away.

It was making him quietly vicious.

By the time the final briefing ended that evening, Max felt half-dead. His collar was open, his sleeves pushed back, and his head ached in a way that made every human voice sound personally offensive.

He stepped into the corridor with the vague intention of finding coffee, silence, or the mercy of unconsciousness.

Then he caught Adam’s scent.

He stopped so suddenly that someone behind him nearly walked into his back.

Max did not care.

Adam.

He turned and followed it on instinct.

“You look terrible,” Adam said.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep